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We were mesmerized at first glance of KANPHATA’s NAME/AMEN, a series of concrete poems formed from the deconstructed names of canonical Anglophone poets — Auden, Eliot, Plath, etc. What is the meaning of a name proffered then dissolved and its remaining fragments? We asked the poet about this; we inquired too about the influence of Wittgenstein and Badiou on this work. From there KANPHATA guided us through a vast terrain of language and ideas, moving swiftly from fake poets and language games to the gap between what exists and what can be said, the contextualization of names, as well as his coming to Anglophone poets as a nonnative speaker of English.

Who/what were your inspirations and influences for NAME/AMEN?

The project NAME/AMEN follows from a sheer desperation with using English language for literary purposes. English is not my native language, I have hardly ever spoken it in the everyday life (before recently coming to the US). And yet, I grew up (as a poet) reading a lot of Anglophone modernist poets. Largely because significant portions of their work are available to read online. This project, as I understand it now, is the wasteful remainder of my ambition to cure myself of my “double consciousness” as a poet. I had been strenuously striving to work myself out of the influence of a decidedly Western poetry and poetics, and yet, it was as if the more I was meaning to formally subvert the Western paragon of newness the more I would end up imitating the “great” Western poets.

This neurosis, and its attendant trials and tribulations, (howsoever romantic they might sound in retrospect, especially to a reader’s “lyric-ears”!) could not be sustained for long, and it culminated into a very painful and traumatic (for me) breakdown of the language I had been working with. A total breakdown at that, right down to the bare physical elements of the language. Although I was loosely aware of traditions of concrete and visual poetry in Brazil and Italy, I was not sure where I was going with this. I mean there was no ambition to create “art” or “poetry” of any “avant” kind, which is why making these works had offered little compensation.

I have enjoyed the wondrous fake anthology of South American poets written by Kenneth Koch, perhaps all the more wondrous for putting into relief the then prevalent mode of “transparent” translation practiced by the likes of Robert Bly. Also, Kent Johnson’s A Question Mark Above the Sun. Robert Kelly’s Earish, his homophonic translations of Celan, is great. And there are several other works too, esp. Brandon Brown’s translations (!!!), but then, alternating between real poems by fake authors and fake poems by real authors, I ended up operating in a completely different medium, one which is neither (only) language nor (only) image, and the personal context of this work is very different too.

We found inspiration for the Review in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statement (from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus): “The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.” How does this speak to your process in NAME/AMEN, or contradict it?

Upon receiving my copies, I kept thinking about this quote from Wittgenstein, which prefaces the volume, as also about the relationship between philosophy and poetry in general. If only in a way, Plato onwards, philosophy has traditionally come to be marked by a rather tragic persistence to philosophize the poem. But, as Marx says, what takes place as a tragedy often repeats itself as a farce. It is not surprising, then, that with the advent of the ’60s the very realm of philosophy should come to be poeticized! In the light of this turn to language, a famous proclamation from Wittgenstein comes to mind : “I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: Philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.” But what is supremely interesting is that Wittgenstein himself did not write his philosophy as a poetic composition. At least not the Wittgenstein of Tractatus. Instead, he takes recourse to a propositional form of writing, one which is almost pointillist in its logical effects, in order to repeatedly hone and clarify the limits of all that can be said, and to thereby circumscribe “the unsayable.” I believe there are important insights to be gleaned from the Wittgenstein of Tractatus. The most crucial of these relate to the minimal but absolute gap between what exists and what is (or can be) said of this existence. To collapse this gap is to fall into an abysmal sophistry of language games, whereby the poet-players mistake their poetics of semiotic deconstruction and glitch-noise for a destruction and/or re-organization of the oppressive forms of social relations we find ourself materially implicated in. Of course, this is not to discount the efficacy and a possible strategic use of the poetics of semiotic noise, especially in the current political situation of the world, but one must remember that noise can remain noise if it determines itself as noise. And this, I sincerely believe, cannot happen if one remains stranded in a wholly sublimated realm of language.

Thinking of NAME/AMEN in this context is kind of difficult for me. Each of these works is an improvisatory organization of black and white loops, curves, arms, chins, serifs, bars, stems on the white surface of the screen. Is this decontextualization of “the letter” a simple formalism of sorts? But then, why is each of these object-glyphs titled— name of __? Is there a hermeneutic to be sought, a bridge of positive correspondence to be built over the otherwise impassable gap separating the title (the name of __) from what it appears to refer to? Surely, this cannot be a meaningless exercise? Etc. There is, for me, an intense affective dimension to this work, one which refuses to be simply brought into consciousness. But let us not compensate the apparent meaninglessness of the work with a discourse of an ordinary pathos of biography, let us not make a spectacle out of the self-hatred the poet had felt while making these works. Let us just say that the work followed from an intensely affective experience with language, that of which one cannot discursively speak. In this regard, the work stands its own stead. To come to think of it now, this does chime rather well with the Wittgenstein of Tractatus— “Whereof we cannot speak thereof one must remain silent.”

The series begins with a quote from Alain Badiou: “ The proper of the name sabotages the common of the concept.” What is the significance of a name, common and proper, and of a name deconstructed?

I was really into Alain Badiou while preparing a manuscript for Meekling’s call for submissions. The quote comes from his essay on Nietzsche. For Badiou, the nomination of the indiscernible is a difficult enterprise. The “indiscernible” is indiscernible because it comes to “make a hole in the given situation,” and for the reason of its incalculable novelty it cannot be named . . . and yet. Badiou resolves this aporia by ensuring that the name of what is otherwise indiscernible is not of the order of signification, but rather it is a name which embodies an “evental quality.” To understand this difference, let us take the example of Kashmir, a symptom of the sovereign democracy that the Indian nation state professes itself to be. On the one hand, in the legislative structures of the Indian democracy, “Kashmir” is identified as one of the 29 states of the country and Kashmiris as legal citizens of the nation. But on the other hand, “Kashmir” is also the name of the freedom sought by those rioting masses in the streets, the masked men, women and kids who spontaneously emerge in the streets day after day armed with nothing but stones to pelt at the Indian army, resisting, in conjunction with an otherwise organized armed militancy across the state, the forced occupation of their homeland. The state, meanwhile, continues to exercise its “right to legislate,” and thus “identify” these militants as Pakistani terrorists or make sense of the riotous rabble as citizens of India who have been seduced by the Pakistani infiltrators and so on, and thus normalize the state of emergency it otherwise perpetuates. This antagonism between the ethos of democracy (farcical as they are) and the militant attempts which resist the forced Indian occupation of Kashmir is constituted and sustained by the same name—“Kashmir”—at once belonging to the legislative structures of the Indian constitution and sustaining the militant longing for freedom. Here, the difference between Badiou and the philosophers of language must become absolutely clear. For unlike the latter, for Badiou the interventional resistances stand in no need of a “different” register of signification. The newness of any movement lies not in the artificial novelty of the names it assumes for itself, for it is not the names themselves which exceed the situation. The novelty of a movement relates instead to the referential meaning of the name it assumes. The name “Kashmir,” if we are to go by Badiou, is supernumerary, is foreclosed from all determinants of Indian democracy, simply because there exist militants who have politically decided on the status of Kashmir, and have, thereby, chosen to demonstrate their fidelity to the same. In this regard, Kashmir is an empty name, or to put it otherwise, it has been named emptily, for it refers only to a world yet to come. The militant profession of the name Kashmir is a persistent clearing away of the forced occupation; it leaves the actual referent of the name void, to be duly filled in the future. What this historically entails for the future we do not know. Does it pertain to Kashmir’s emancipation as a nation-state? But, given the geopolitical situation, does not Kashmir’s emancipation rest upon the emancipation of the whole of South Asia? Of course, Badiou’s formalized abstractions are useless when it comes to these real geopolitical considerations. But I had found his rumination on the anti-Hegelian philosophy of Nietzsche particularly interesting.

The example I have used pertains to politics. The decontextualization of names that the project NAME/AMEN undertakes operates at an entirely different level of abstraction, that of poetry. It is dangerous to use either poetry or politics as an analogy to suit the other’s ends, but please, please indulge me awhile, and at least for now let me wager my thoughts! In a way, I think this project seeks to name these poets emptily yet again, to destroy the modernist monoliths. I mean who cares about the “great modernist works” and their “newness”? At least I did/do not.

You say you wanted to become a yogi but became a poet instead—at what point did these paths diverge?

In order to become Kanphata, a disciple of Gorakhnath, he had to have his ears split. But once it came to pass, he mysteriously turned into a visual poet, a people’s answer to Zarathusra’s complaints— “Must one smash their ears, so they may learn to listen with their eyes?”

KANPHATA: At my birth I split my ears to be able to see better. I grew up wanting to be a yogi. I ended up becoming a poet.

Aditya Bahl is a member of the Delhi-based Marxist collective Radical Notes. A book of poems will be out soon from Delet-e (Delete Press). A chapbook of poems is forthcoming from LRL Textile Series. A chapbook called this is visual poetry by aditya bahl was published in 2013 by Dan Waber’s imprint this is visual poetry.

“The proper of the name sabotages the common of the concept” Alain Badiou

name of stevens mallarme eliot

KANPHATA: At my birth I split my ears to be able to see better. I grew up wanting to be a yogi. I ended up becoming a poet.

Aditya Bahl is a member of the Delhi-based Marxist collective Radical Notes. A book of poems will be out soon from Delet-e (Delete Press). A chapbook of poems is forthcoming from LRL Textile Series. A chapbook called this is visual poetry by aditya bahl was published in 2013 by Dan Waber’s imprint this is visual poetry

We spoke briefly with art critic Gabriel Kendra about his critical practice as well as his obsession with artist Matthew Lacker’s Ten-Second Sculptures, four of which are featured alongside Kendra’s analyses in the latestMeekling Review.Lacker’sanalysis of Kendra’s $33,224,369.98 was featured previously on the blog.

From Matthew Lacker’s lecture on Gabriel Kendra’s Ten-Second Sculptures at the NeoFuturarium, September 21, 2017.

What first drew you to Gabriel Kendra’s work? And please, tell us more about his Ten Second-Sculptures in relation to his larger body of work.

His larger body of work–at least as far as I have seen–seems to focus on living a life that produces a constant stream of actions, objects, events, performances, structures, and thoughts that each individually could be construed as artworks. When I first encountered it I was fascinated by the way that art can be made so readily and so freely, it’s almost too good to be true. Whether it’s hitting a snooze button or swiping a metro-card I can sense that artful intent is present. I also feel that this artful intent is eager to be researched, developed, produced, market, financed, and distributed, which admittedly is the extent of my involvement with it.

I’m curious about your passion for non-glossy finishes. What else are you passionate about, Matthew Lacker?

When I was younger strangers would often confuse me with “Matte Lacquer” which is the matte version of a liquid made of shellac dissolved in alcohol, or of synthetic substances, that dries to form a hard protective coating for wood, metal, etc…As a child I was fascinated that another Matt Lacker existed, and I guess my fascination just grew from there.

Is art history/criticism your usual metier?

No, actually. I began as someone interested in the creation of art but found that it was not my forte. I lacked the panache, both technically and conceptually to compete in the mêlée that is the modern art world and ultimately felt that I was just a poseur with a Papier-mâché facade. Perhaps it is a faux pas to admit such personal failings, but now it is a fait accompli. I think I have evolved beyond the gaffe of my earlier career, and have become a creative entrepreneur of sorts, a generalist where each task is an hors d’œuvre which combine into an overall joie de vivre. I do not primarily dabble in art history or critique but it is one of my intellectual ac·cou·tre·ments. A knot in my macramé of pursuits I suppose.

Do you know if Kendra is constructing more 10-Second Sculptures in response to these politically fraught times? If so, can you disclose any hints as to what they might involve?

I am sure he is. As far as I am aware Kendra is in a near perpetual state of performing actions and identifying objects that have profound political and cultural resonance. He often does not speak candidly as to their meaning–I will have to take time out soon to examine them for significance.

Matthew Lacker is passionate about non-glossy finishes.

Gabriel Kendra is from Richmond, Virginia, and a graduate of VCUArts, currently living in Chicago and occasionally making zines.

Find more of Kendra’s Ten-Second Sculptures & Lacker’s analysis in The Meekling Review:

Join us TONIGHT for a new hour of TALKS featuring two lecturers presenting on their work in The Meekling Review. C. Relkbi (aka Rebecca Nakaba) will be presenting on her B-Movie research and Matthew Lacker will be speaking on Gabriel Kendra’s Ten-Second Sculptures. Lacker’s analysis of Kendra’s $33,224,369.98 (below) also appears in The Meekling Review.

$33,224,369.98 is an instillation by artist Gabriel Kendra consisting of a medium-sized slab of 24-karat gold (donation courtesy J.P. Morgan) situated in an abandoned plot of land in Richmond, Virginia, where the artist currently resides. This action speaks plainly of society’s dichotomous relationship with the economy and the environment, as well as illustrating Homo sapiens’ unchanging relationship with the landscape over the history of recorded space-time.

The object proclaims the dominance of American capitalism despite growing ecological anxieties—its existence a reference to the entire history of human achievement, which has allowed for the accumulation of and forging of precious metals into art objects. The placement of the golden slab into a less-valuable landscape is a reference to the 21st-century technological achievements eclipsing the venerability of works of God—specifically the hundreds of years of natural endurance which have crafted the landscape.

By investigating the subjective measures of utility and worth, this Ten-Second Sculpture seems to concisely and authoritatively bring to a close the age-old question of what is greater: man’s lust for capital or for the sublime.

The golden slab was valued at approximately $33 million at the time of the project’s execution.

Matthew Lacker is passionate about non-glossy finishes.

Gabriel Kendra is from Richmond, Virginia, and a graduate of VCUArts, currently living in Chicago and occasionally making zines.

Find more of Kendra’s Ten-Second Sculptures & Lacker’s analysis in The Meekling Review:

If nothing else we Meeklings believe in Wittgenstein and his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and the way it articulates so clearly an idea we summoned when making The MeeklingReview: “The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.’ What is that limit? How far can we overshoot? We grasped towards it with words and searched for it in work that bathed us in so much nonsense we couldn’t help but make sense of it. We had our contributors cloak themselves in false identities, too.

Nijinsky’s Head, better known as Kyle Coma-Thompson is the author of ‘Mutiny in Heaven,’ a poem whose narrator insists on the performance of other selves, one of whom is possibly Njininsky: “Truth is, I am someone else alive in the leap,” he says. We published an excerpt from Kyle’s poem earlier this week. In today’s Q&A we asked him some questions about the poem:

What inspired “Mutiny in Heaven”?

Over a span of six and a half weeks, while living in Switzerland at the beginning of WWI, Nijinsky writes his diaries. Thirty-one years later, he dies, having spent half his life in what can only be called “poor mental health.” Thirty-three years later, the Australian group The Birthday Party makes their last recording, the Mutiny! EP. The last song on that recording is a hilarious ear-orgy of gored, grotesque sound, titled a bit cheekily “Mutiny In Heaven”. Thirty years after that some quiet American sits down to listen to the Mutiny! EP while simultaneously leafing through Nijinsky’s diaries and finds himself duly humbled and moved by the poignancy and ferocity of last works. So to commemorate the occasion, he writes a poem.

The events of the past week(s)—including the commander in chief’s telling the FEMA chief that he’d become “ very famous” as a result of Hurricane Harvey, and his excuse of timing Joe Arpaio’s pardon to ‘maximize’ ratings—are a hollow echo of “Mutiny in Heaven”’s observations regarding power and authority and celebrity. Is our narrator Nijinsky prophetic? Chronology says he precedes our times and yet he’s a keen reader of them….

Nijinsky was Russian and a celebrity in his time. So you could say he was acquainted with the worst aspects of human nature, by design. But then, he was able to render such beautiful movements with something so small and fragile as the human body. So his vision of the contradictions of our current moment, you could say, was comprehensive, and total.

With regard to identity: I came away from recently reading Catherine Lacey’s The Answers, thinking of the narrator’s claim that “Love is a compromise for only getting to be one person,” I liked the sound of this, but then when confronting the narrator of “Mutiny in Heaven”, he refutes this idea of only having to be one person, stating, “Truth is I am someone else, alive in the leap.” I like the sound of this too. If identity is shifting, how does the narrator perform this, and what is the price for getting to be many people?

Maybe best to say: having to be one body is the price we pay for getting to be many people. And that that’s a paradox that leads so many of us into so much trouble.

I would say, being the narrator of a poem titled “Mutiny in Heaven” instead of a novel titled The Answers, it seems to me many hope that love will do the opposite—keep them still, in place, stable, only one person. Being multiple is a restless confusion; so maybe it’d be safer to be only one thing to one person—if that’s love. Which, of course, it isn’t. Not the kind that lasts. But then, this is only one version of me that’s saying this. There’re others in here who’d say different. And so it goes, the comedy of the human condition—outrageous, subtle, relentless.

What do you think of this Nijinsky’s head, Nijinsky’s Head? (below, by Auguste Rodin) Why not cast your feet? What is most overlooked with regard to Nijinsky? And what does he overlook himself?

Dancing begins in the mind, so it only makes sense A. Rodin would sculpt my head. My feet are in my mind…so you have to look me in the face if you want to appreciate them—while they’re in movement, while I’m thinking them.

What’s most overlooked? The thirty years I spent in exile at the end of my life, away from what everyone expected of me. I feel like poor Robert Walser. Only long after I’m gone do comfortable people feel moved to take up my name and speak of me as if I were always alongside them—instead of beneath them, for a very, very long time. God help them. And me too.

Nijinsky’s Head was born on Apr. 8th 1950 in London, England. It has been rolling towards you ever since, and will continue to do so long after you’re gone.

Kyle Coma-Thompson is the author of short story collections The Lucky Body (Dock Street Press, 2014) and Night in the Sun (Dock Street Press, 2016). The title story for this book was included by Ben Marcus in the anthology New American Stories (Vintage, 2015)

get your own damn copy!?

“He also gave a final dance concert, before an invited audience, at a near-by hotel, the Suvretta House. As Romola describes the performance, Nijinsky began by taking a chair, sitting down in front of the audience, and staring at them for what seemed like half an hour. Eventually he unrolled two lengths of velvet, one white, one black, to form a cross on the floor. Standing at the head of the cross, he addressed the audience: ‘Now I will dance you the war… the war which you will not prevent.’”

*

Father, Son & Holy Ferret, I want rest, I want rest, I want rest. From up the zero rectum of this great green void, at last I’ve come out as sane as my mother before she made me. Was it the voice of the Authority still on me like sleek afterbirth that I heard, shaking my head a bit to knock loose the amniotic fluid still trapped within my ears? “Are you willing to be a nobody? Yes?” Yes. “Then you are free. I condemn you.”

*

So, condemned as such, besmirched like a louse fresh from the crush of a thumb, I was spat out like human realism, cast out. The churches would not have me. The halfway houses would not have me. The myriad jackbag jobs would not have me. And yet, was I not a spy as I was–a devout Christian, homeless, diseased with criminal drugs? To the nearest low wage I took myself and from the incredible hours passing through me made something measly. Under the awning above the grocery loading dock, I stood half in sunlight and submitted myself to a coworker’s lessons on smoking. Hold the cigarette like so. Suck. Hold the smoke, then let it flow out, or blow. Out both nostrils if you are a true animal. And if you are so skilled, out of one only. Best to be elegant with your cancer.

*

The somebodies, what of them? The somebodies, they say, are deeply weak for their identities, which, of course, we give them. We kill them to be one thing and one thing only. Here one comes walking along, snipping people’s ears off with scissors. In their presence everyone learns to listen. The end of God is a mouth. Blah blah. The end of the mouth is God. Now that sounds more like it. A sweet day for the nobodies, who have had to stand by for so long, moving through the vanishing circuits like so much Zen money. For today, like us, they drag God from his inborn lair, face-down through the streets of his literature.

*

Because he was one of the first, wasn’t he? For I am full of increase now, moving through the bowels of Authority’s communal ego—I can, and will say it! Celebrities are feces of the disenchanted, the anonymous, blandly downtrodden, lives too dumb to rise. Here is Monica Belluci, here is Beyonce, here is Jack Nicholson and Andy Warhol and, yes, barely last and mostly least, yours only—Nijinksy! Then we are, here we go, on our mobile thrones, carried across wasteland relevance atop a velvet pillow. As our pallbearers crumble, their children step to take up pillow. The burden, as they hate themselves praising us so, is more than they could ever know!

*

To dance the war, then! A pornography of realism. I lay no preexisting claims on what will happen next. Ballet is life lunging out of death. It says much—that no one now would dare believe it. As I have established, I am of these beings, vibrating among them along the nimble continual string of consciousness. Each time I seize one and become them, I tell them: every day I meet my maker, because I am him. They only believe in their condition, as if it were selected for them, like a body. A body is there to leap out of time, to shame space and gravity, and just as vigilantly, sculpt it! These weaklings, these inborn wraiths, who have never allowed themselves to be brushed so by the unreal greatness of their bodies!

*

A good hard living look. A good look at them. And there they go, one by one: staring back. What do they think I think they are? They should know, I am full gone obliterated back through the insane navel of my animal. Whilst they sit and stare, reduced, like just that: an audience. Cast out at breakneck speed into helplessness. Though to them it feels like waiting for no one else.

*

As I am! No one! One with a body, a Nobody! A Nobody flooding space like a ghost! Hold me close, Holy Ghost! Drowning in the now, new as a death-throe, as full tight with birth as roe.

*

Look up, and there you are. A leap suspends us—you, me, every one of me as you—above and below, unknown!

*

The meaning of life is power. The meaning of life is self-interest in flower. Those who can’t climb it, hallucinate it. Ranting, doctors would later say, is the sympathetic magic of madness. Imagine how dangerous I would be if I were useful! High on the view from up here, where I leapt with a lonely body, and then, from that simple height, one by one, dropped them.

*

Nijinsky’s Head was born on Apr. 8th 1950 in London, England. It has been rolling towards you ever since, and will continue to do so long after you’re gone.

Kyle Coma-Thompson is the author of short story collections The Lucky Body (Dock Street Press, 2014) and Night in the Sun (Dock Street Press, 2016). The title story for this book was included by Ben Marcus in the anthology New American Stories (Vintage, 2015)

We’ve been toiling behind the scenes for a while now — for over a year! — searching far and wide for assortment of fevered dreams and absurdities, heartbreaks and betrayals in order to collect and bring them together here in the freshest of compendiums, The Meekling Review.

The answer is yes — but mostly no. This issue, No. SZQ.645π, is the first and the last, the alpha and omega.

Or maybe it’s easiest to say The Meekling Review is a slice from a one-off pie in the sky. Or something like that.

As we explain in our editors’ letter:

“We stumbled upon the idea of a Review with a sense of despondency toward language and toward any sort of seriousness. There was something wrong with how sincerity juxtaposed against the absurdity of our current political climate, and the direness of our planet’s future habitability. What use are words when so devoid of meaning, what are promises without follow-through? We sought to take the formality and superciliousness of criticism and supersilly it, dash it open upon he dregs of our hopes to let it blossom in all its messy joy.”

Drawing inspiration from Pataphysics and Dada — we aspired to turn the seriousness of literary criticism on its head and transform it into something more clever, playful, absurd.

How did we do? What did we realize? Anything? Nothing?

You’ll have to look inside. The Meekling Review filled with meaty ads and a prose poem about the performances of self, psycomagic-inspired tarot readings, symbolic logic magic, a catalog of opening paragraphs, a series of images and their artistic analysis, studies on rat habitats, and a alternative taxonomies of a distinguished literary oeuvre.

We plan in the coming weeks to bring you excerpts and author interviews….